Get a child, they said. It'll be fun, they said. Well, the couples and families in some of the most horrific horror films of this century and the last all have children, and look what happened to them. As it turns, out, some of the most notorious and sneakiest killers or villains in horror cinema are children—evil children, to be exact which may or may not be too far off from toddlers depending on who gets asked.

In any case, evil children in horror movies are a recurring trope—one that never fails to inspire fear. Whether it came from the twisted sentiments of filmmakers' views about children—theirs or otherwise, or merely a product of a wild imagination, evil children tend to be more sinister than the usual cinema monster. These films ought to prove that point.

Updated on January 31, 2024, by Mara Cowley: Horror movies are designed to play on common fears, such as insects, and inanimate objects coming alive, and even put sadistic twists on what some people could consider safe, normal, or even innocent, like children. Many horror movies play on the idea that the sweet little cherubs in peoples' lives could become corrupted into evil beings with their own nefarious agendas. As such, many horror movies about kids have been made to play on this idea, with films such as The Omen being among the most famous. But, there have been many other movies adding their own spin on this idea, and this article has been updated to showcase more evil kid movies that will give even the bravest viewers nightmares.

23 Village Of The Damned

Tomatometer: 30%

• Release year: 1995
• Director: John Carpenter

Though mostly known for the every-popular slasher classic Halloween, John Carpenter continued his career as a successful horror director, bringing horror fans Village of the Damned in the mid-90s, a movie that proves direct opposition to the phrase "The kids are alright".

In a sleepy coastal town, the villagers blackout at 10 am, and wake up again at 4 pm, and following this mysterious blackout, four women fall pregnant but do not give birth to normal children. These children display impressive psychic powers and very little compassion for human life. When the townsfolk decide it's time to cleanse Midwich of their presence, they are in for a nasty surprise when the children fight back.

22 Goodnight Mommy

Tomatometer: 37%

• Release year: 2015
• Director: Matt Sobel

With a Shyamalan-like twist near the end of the film, Goodnight Mommy makes its audience unnerved with every minute and every frame they see in the film. It follows the story of twins, Elias and Lukas, whose mother suddenly became distant after getting facial surgery.

Soon enough, the twin boys start testing the limits of their mother's patience and affection all the while conducting their own investigation into whether she's still their mother or not. What makes it work is how the movie keeps viewers guessing or even questioning their sanity or the twins,' or even the mother's.

21 Children Of The Corn

Tomatometer: 39%

• Release year: 1984
• Director: Fritz Kiersch

One usually expects something unfavorable to happen while stopping over in a countryside whose landscape is populated with corn plants. However, murderous children are far from the list of suspects in such a scenario. Children of the Corn explores that take.

Again, it involves an unfortunate couple who got trapped in a town that can only be summed up as a more violent version of Neverland, where the children's inhabitants believe that anyone above the age of 18 is too old to live. That's bad news for the two adults.

20 The Prodigy

Tomatometer: 42%

• Release year: 2019
• Director: Nicholas McCarthy

The life of a prodigy must be a tough one, with the weight of their parents' expectations burdening their shoulders and lacking any peers who share their age and intelligence. Could they really be blamed if they snapped under all that pressure?

But that is not the reason for young Miles' violent behavior. A prodigy since his birth, he could speak fluently even before he reached toddler age, displaying impressive intelligence and wisdom. It is soon revealed that the gifted child is possessed by the ghost of a dangerous serial killer, and he is using the young boy's body to continue his crimes even after death.

19 Pet Sematary

Tomatometer: 55%

• Release year: 1989
• Director: Mary Lambert

The power of grieving people isn't to be underestimated in this Stephen King classic. Pet Sematary happens after a doctor named Louis Creed gets introduced to a place where dead creatures come back to life. He went there hoping to bring back a dead and beloved family pet.

Too bad pets weren't the only creatures resurrected in the place as some other grieving family decided to help themselves to a dose of revival for one of their dead children. As it turns out, creatures brought back from the dead don't take kindly to the world of the living.

18 Brightburn

Tomatometer: 57%

• Release year: 2019
• Director: David Yarovesky

Brightburn is first and foremost, a depiction of an alternate Superman where he's evil yet again. The film puts its own twist on this rather cliched superhero formula by turning it into a horror film. A disturbed child with Superman's powers is nothing to scoff at, after all.

Initially, it starts off similar to Martha and Jonathan Kent's story in Superman. A seemingly normal boy suddenly enters puberty and starts experiencing some oddities in his psyche and physique. Dark and evil forces are suspected here as the boy threatens those around him with destruction and his twisted urges.

17 Orphan

Tomatometer: 58%

• Release year: 2009
• Director: Jaume Collet-Serra

There's plenty that can go wrong with a horror film titled Orphan, and viewers can probably guess the cavalcade of problems with adopting a girl with a goth getup. Well, that didn't stop a certain family from taking in dear innocent "nine-year-old" Esther after they lost their infant.

Sadly, things started going awry for the household after Esther was brought in. Some freak accidents that look like they might have been orchestrated started popping up. Moreover, Esther's gaze is a little unsettling for a nine-year-old. One could probably already predict the calamity about to befall the hapless couple, but it's still worth watching Orphan for how it will unfold.

16 Sinister

Tomatometer: 63%

• Release year: 2012
• Director: Scott Derrickson

This modern horror flick takes the ideas of cute home movies families shoot and twists them into something quite sinister. After struggling true crime writer Ellison and his family move into a house where a notorious murder occurred, he uncovers an unnerving tape displaying the brutal murder and uncovers a much bigger story than he was hoping for. He finds multiple snuff tapes showing families being murdered in various horrific ways, and the culprit of each being the youngest child in the family.

Though under the influence of the evil demon Bughuul, it is still shocking to see these elaborate and grisly murders being performed by a young child, especially towards their own family.

15 It's Alive

Tomatometer: 67%

• Release year: 1974
• Director: Larry Cohen

Welcoming a baby into the world should be an exciting time, but for parents Frank and Lenore Davis, their dream of having a second child quickly becomes a nightmare. The baby that is born to them is a horrifying mutant that emerges from the womb on the hunt for victims, already evil incarnate before they even open their eyes. The creature slays many unsuspecting doctors and nurses before making an escape, painting the opening of this 70s flick the crimson shade of blood.

Although viewers will be hard-pressed to find sympathy for this baby after watching the bloodshed unfold, the infant is an unfortunate victim of a drug experiment gone wrong, and the blame for its actions could be placed elsewhere. Nevertheless, It's Alive remains a shocking horror movie featuring a killer baby.

14 The Children

Tomatometer: 76%

• Release year: 2008
• Director: Tom Shankland

Going on a vacation with family can be murder--quite literally, in the movie The Children. A direct inverse to the Nicolas Cage movie Mom and Dad, The Children brings a thriller tale of horror, starring evil children.

When some parents take their children away for a winter trip of fun adventures through the snow and some family bonding time, imagine their shock and horror when one of the children grows sick, contracting a disease that doesn't just give them sniffles and a cough, but instead turns them into brutal killers. With helpless parents not able to just give them Calpol and call it a day, they will have to think fast and smart to survive.

13 Alice, Sweet Alice

Tomatometer: 77%

• Release year: 1976
• Director: Alfred Sole

With a name like Alice, Sweet Alice, people could be forgiven for thinking this is another safe-to-watch movie starring a sweet and adorable young girl at its heart, but those people would be in for a bloody surprise when the movie gets going. This movie is anything but safe, and Alice is anything but sweet.

Alice suffers as the second-best child to her young sister Karen, who gains all the love and affection of their mother, leaving not even scraps of attention for 12-year-old Alice. But one day, Karen turns up dead after being brutally murdered, and of course, everyone suspects the jealous sister, leaving the question of how far a child would go for the love of a parent.

12 The Exorcist

Tomatometer: 78%

• Release year: 1973
• Director: William Friedkin

The Exorcist is one of the most notable horror films of its generation, and it contributed a lot to horror cinema for decades. Even today, it still holds up well thanks to the excellent makeup and acting by Linda Blair. The story is simple enough; a girl starts off sick and progressively descends into a demonic trance while her mother copes with the difficulties of rearing such a child.

Here, the journey of the exorcism itself is worth watching, more so than waiting for the result. Never have exorcisms been this visceral or spine-chilling, and even to this day, many exorcism copycats still fail to reproduce the success or the atmosphere of The Exorcist.

11 Who Can Kill A Child?

Tomatometer: 79% (Audience)

• Release year: 1976
• Director: Narciso Ibáñez Serrador

Who Can Kill a Child? explores the notion of the protagonist's victims being helpless against their aggressors, since the latter are children. That's explained well enough in the title. It begins when a lovey-dovey couple goes for a vacation on a strange island.

They soon discover that the island's small town is mostly populated with children. Eventually, the couple discovers the madness that befell these children. It turns out the kids were responsible for the disappearance of all the adults in the town, having murdered most of them. As luck would have it, the couple is next in line in the grindhouse.

10 Eden Lake

Tomatometer: 81%

• Release year: 2008
• Director: James Watkins

Some of the most effective horror movies are ones that stay away from supernatural scares such as ghosts and demons and instead are based on real-life threats that do occur, such as home invasions or youth violence. This is what Eden Lake does with brilliance, following the story of a couple on a romantic getaway in a remote location who quickly discover the location they have chosen may not be as idyllic as they originally thought.

Plagued by a gang of violent youths, these evil teens are deadset on visiting every kind of torture on the young couple, transforming the holiday into a fight for survival. The stories in real life that resemble the story of Eden Lake only make this movie all the more horrific and tough to watch.

9 The Brood

Tomatometer: 81%

• Release year: 1979
• Director: David Cronenberg

The Brood is another classic way back in the previous century. It tells quite a unique story as far as horror films go, following the tale of a man and his murderous institutionalized wife and their efforts to fix her condition. The couple enlists the help of a controversial psychologist whose methods are unconventional and odd.

As the psychologist progresses with his "treatment" for the patient, strange phenomena start happening to the latter's relatives. For one, the patient's mother is suddenly attacked by monstrous deformed children, along with many other eccentric and violent events.

8 The Omen

Tomatometer: 84%

• Release year: 1976
• Director: Richard Donner

It was only a matter of time before someone thought of making a clueless couple's child the literal Son of the Devil. The Omen got dibs on the idea. It features Damien, a seemingly perfect kid of a seemingly perfect couple. Then, as Damien started aging up, bad things started happening around the family.

Bad things such as casual suicide and random deaths, as well as animals, suddenly going rabid. It's a novel idea back then that doesn't rely on jump scares or some cheap frights in order to instill the horror of having Satan's baby in one's arms.

7 It

Tomatometer: 85%

• Release year: 2017
• Director: Andy Muschietti

Stephen King's classic turned into a film; It is one of the biggest hits of the last decade. The main antagonist here is, of course, the iconic horror clown Pennywise as he terrorizes a small town. A group of outcasts takes the brunt of Pennywise's transgressions, but apart from the clown, the Losers' Club has to deal with local bullies.

These aren't just regular sand-kicking bullies, however. The Bowers Gang is murderous and perverse, often holding no reservations about mutilating members of the Losers' Club. Along with Pennywise, they make life for the kids in Derry, Maine a living hell.

6 Better Watch Out

Tomatometer: 88%

• Release year: 2016
• Director: Chris Peckover

Coming out barely a year after Goodnight Mommy, Better Watch Out solidifies the notion of children being nasty and sly wee devils propelled by severe psychotic disorders. In this case, Better Watch Out makes it so that the babysitter's child is the culprit.

Ashley never saw it coming, and she also didn't anticipate that her ward was a genius psycho capable of hatching up elaborate plans to kill her ex-boyfriends and torture her, all the while making it look like babysitter negligence. It's a fresh idea through and through.

5 Carrie

Tomatometer: 93%

• Release year: 1976
• Director: Brian De Palma

Initially, Carrie never had the makings of a villain or an evil child, but thanks to bullying and a prom, she quickly flipped a switch and became a telekinetic killer. It's also another of Stephen King's classics where the buildup is slow and the payoff is huge.

Carrie wasn't the most popular girl in school thanks to her mother, who preferred a more reclusive life for her. This turned her into an outcast, and for good reason. Carrie can just about vaporize anyone who earns her ire, and in a bloody manner too. Rather gruesome as a metaphor for puberty and coming-of-age.

4 The Innocents

Tomatometer: 97%

• Release year: 2021
• Director: Eskil Vogt

This chilling Norwegian flick has gained praise far and wide for its subversion of the innocence of youth, and it is clear to see why. At the height of summer in Norway, a group of children reveal they each have supernatural powers, such as telekinesis or telepathy. What starts off as playful fun soon takes on a more menacing tone as the harmless playing becomes increasingly dangerous, costing the lives of some.

This switch to a darker tone is genius, playing on the fear that evil innocents such as children are not immune to acts of pure wickedness, and is masterfully portrayed by the young actors.